Step Into My Parlor
by Spun
Summary: '"Alec is my brother," she enunciates slowly. She's not so tall this close up, perhaps five-ten, but her air is that of a wolf facing down a quivering rabbit. "And because I think you might do him some good, I'm giving you a chance."' Isabelle gives Magnus the shovel talk, somewhere between CoB and CoA.


**Step Into My Parlor  
**

**Disclaimer: **_The Mortal Instruments _belongs to Cassandra Clare.

**Warnings: **None.

**Notes:** I asked for prompts on my tumblr. This was from may10baby, who asked for Isabelle talking laying down the rules for dating her brother.

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_"Will you step into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly._

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The girl on the landing is tall and beautiful and looks like she should be splashed across the glossy cover of a fashion magazine; Magnus catches himself coveting her silver-studded boots before she raises a hand and brushes back a tumble of raven-colored hair. The runes scrawled across her white skin slap the envy from his thoughts. He lets himself slouch casually against the wall, calm, unintimidated, but his hand tightens ever so slightly on the door jamb. "I don't recall buzzing you up," he says, examining his fingernails.

"You weren't answering the bell," she replies boredly, "so I took a little initiative." Her fingers drum a staccato beat on the glimmering stele hung from her belt.

Magnus hopes the downstairs door is still in one piece. "Well, then, what can I do for you?" He recognizes her from the party a few weeks ago, but then, she was a giggly, flushed girl spinning in a haze of liquor rather than the cool-eyed Shadowhunter before him. He knows exactly who she is, of course. Even if Magnus had never met her, Alec loves his siblings more than anything, and his words bring them to life, shape them through childhood stories and rambling anecdotes with no real endings and half-remembered snatches of demon hunts that dribble off into nothingness as he falls asleep. "Make it quick," he adds, picking at a chipping sheet of nail polish, "I'm busy."

"Oh, I just came to thank you for the _wonderful_ party," Isabelle chirps. Magnus hikes an eyebrow. She steps across the threshold of the apartment, steps into his space without so much as a 'please'. Her lips part just enough to show off jagged slivers of gleaming teeth. "And to make something very, very clear."

An eyeblink later, her stele is in hand, pushing deep into his shirt until the material puckers. Magnus's fingers twitch - it would be so easy, so easy to grasp at just one of the thin filaments of magic that thrum through her like arteries and _pull_ - but he suspects he knows the reason for her visit, so he doesn't freeze her into a gorgeous (and admirably well-dressed) statue. He favors her with a silky smile and says, "Go on, then, don't hold me in suspense."

Isabelle smiles, sinks her stele in further until he feels the prickle of glass against his skin. "Alec is my brother," she enunciates slowly. She's not so tall this close up, perhaps five-ten, but her air is that of a wolf facing down a quivering rabbit. "And because I think you might do him some good, I'm giving you a chance. _One_ chance. If you hurt him - if you make him cry - if you do _anything_ that gives me reason to think he's better off without you, _I will ruin you_. I will make sure you're dethroned from your little 'High Warlock' position. You're a Downworlder - you are _nothing_ but what the Clave allows you to be."

"My, my," Magnus intones, "how _dire_." Nephilim superiority drips from her every word, and oh, she's _trying_ for the racist-Shadowhunter-schtick, but her heart's not really in it. The ones who truly hate Magnus's kind spit poison from their ivory towers, don't lower themselves to warlock parties and faerie dances, don't waltz into a Downworlder's apartment without an invite. Isabelle flaunts a comfortable familiarity - he'd hazard a guess that she's dated more than a few lesser beings. He peels the dark polish from his finger, frowns at the pale, bare oval of nail beneath, and asks, "Do you know why I'm dating your brother?"

Isabelle blinks, caught off guard, and he saunters on before she can recover. "He fascinates me," Magnus says, buffing his fingernail on his shirt. "He's clever, he's candid, he asks far too many questions, he doesn't know a _thing_ about the real world - and you -" He traces a finger through the air to indicate her entire species as a whole. "The Clave and all their nitpicky rules and regulations and the lovely noose of punishment you all have around your throats if you set so much as a toe out of line - he has no idea how to free himself from that. I want to help him. He'll be _brilliant_ if he doesn't burn himself out trying to conform." He flicks her stele. The glassy ring echoes through the hallway.

"You -" Isabelle's throat works, her brows set into a flat line; when she finds her voice again she says, "Alec isn't just some shiny new toy, you know. You can't throw him away once he stops _interesting_ you."

Magnus offers up his own razorblade grin. To her credit, she doesn't flinch. "The thing about people like that," he says, "is once you break through their shell, they're the most interesting people in the world."

Her lips corkscrew, but the angry fireburst behind her eyes is dwindling, and he thinks she may be trying not to smile. "All the same, if you hurt him, I'm burning down your apartment with you in it."

"Dear me," Magnus says mildly.

She withdraws the stele and slides it into her belt again, fluffs her hair with her hands. "Well," Isabelle says, "glad that's settled." She steps back into the doorway and nibbles at her lower lip. "Be good to him. He deserves it." And then she flounces down the stairs, her dress slapping against her calves, the buckles on her boots jangling. Magnus swings the door gently into its frame, smoothes his shirt, now pockmarked from Isabelle's stele, and goes to repaint his nails, a smile tugging at his mouth.

A shovel talk from Alec's sixteen-year-old sister. Who would've thought?

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I would, of course, like it if you left a review. :)


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